RUFC - Club apologise for ticket problems

Rotherham United fans have been spitting feathers over the ticket fiasco that has somewhat quelled their euphoria at the thought of their team getting to Wembley.

Phone lines and Internet lines opened at mid-day last Friday and almost immediately it was obvious there was a problem with some people's season ticket numbers.

That seemed to have been sorted by the start of this week but then other problems arose, such as Ticketmaster, who were organising the Millers' Wembley Play-Off tickets, suddenly, on occasions, stopped selling more than one ticket at a time and not taking group bookings.

Speaking to The Advertiser, Chief Operating Officer, Paul Douglas has apologised for any inconvenience while admitting that Ticketmaster's reluctance of releasing certain tickets at certain times was due to a request made by the club to try and keep fans close together to create a better atmosphere.

'We didn't just want a scattergun approach to selling tickets,' Mr Douglas said, 'and we learned from Rochdale's experience of having fans spaced out that we wanted to ensure that each seating block was full before opening another. If this has meant that some people have been inconvenienced then we apologise.'

Speaking about selling the tickets through Ticketmaster, Mr Douglas explained, 'We had to submit plans of our ticket sales to the FA and it soon became clear that, with the limited parking at Barbot Hall, there was no way we could sell twenty thousand plus tickets. By Monday night eleven thousand tickets had been sold and we could never have hoped to achieve that by ourselves.

'Hopefully, for all those who have had a negative experience there are hundreds who have got hold of tickets easily.'

Ticket sales have been tapering off a bit over the last few days and I know of two groups of people - about eighteen in all - who were so frustrated with trying to get sat together they have decided to watch together at home. OK, that's only around five hundred pounds in lost ticket revenue, but surely those five hundred pounds is a lot to a club like Rotherham United?

And, not everyone has the internet or a credit/debit card to use. Let's hope, if we have to go up via the play-offs again in the near future, that something better than this can be sorted out.

Me, yes, I had a problem getting tickets on the first day - it was a problem that stemmed from a computer failure at the club at the start of the season. It happens, we all know what computers are like, but we also know that people, in this day and age, have to learn to think on their feet - once the first person complained about not being able to get tickets on-line then, surely, it should have been sorted straight away?